Jacob’s Blog

Recapping…

This is more of an afterthought to my Herbie Overflow post than anything else. I’d like to recap a couple of points…

• Murphy’s law is always working against you. Eventually a snail, fish, or some algae is going to restrict or completely block your overflow standpipe.
• Having multiple standpipes reduces the chance of flooding due to a blocked pipe.

Use of standpipes is popular because they raise the water level in the overflow box and quiet down the waterfall effect. The higher the pipe the less waterfall. For many of us, myself included, this means that the air inlet on your standpipe (most designs utilize an air inlet) is above the rim of the aquarium. This is fine, however it eliminates an intrinsic safety mechanism of the standpipe.

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Herbie Overflow
Funny name for a nifty idea. A guy by the name of Herbie came up with this, not that it’s an earth shattering idea but he was the first to document it and become recognized for the idea. Today I completed the addition of a Herbie Overflow to Project 360. Before I get into the install, let’s review why we use standpipes and look at a few different standpipe/overflow designs.

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As I was explaining to my friends on Reef Central recently, I ran into my first technical problem with the plumbing. My divert valve is leaking at the seat. This means that most of the flow from my return pump is making it back to the tank, however a small trickle is being lost via the auto-water change drain line! I discovered this while working under the house to complete the air exchange system (more on that later). Since I had not tied in the auto-water change drain line to the house drain it was dripping to the ground. I noticed recently that I had been replacing more and more evap. water… which didn’t make sense due to the damp weather. Well now I know why, it wasn’t evaporation it was saltwater being lost!!

This is the valve that I have now, which has either gone bad or has been bad from the start. It’s a Chemtrol-Nibco model S51D2-E

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To recap the plumbing on Project 360 there are essentially 2 systems:

1) The in-house plumbing. This consists of the piping between the display tank and sump as well as the piping, electrical conduit, and ducting through the walls and into the crawlspace. This is part of Phase I (see below) and is now complete.

2) The water room plumbing. This consists of the piping between the water storage tanks, dosing system, auto top off system, and the display tank. This is part of Phase II and is partially complete.

In case I have not mentioned it already I have split the project into 2 phases as well. Phase I - get the tank up and running under manual control, and Phase II - integrate the automation components. Below are some photos along with descriptions of the Phase I plumbing.

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The Return Pump

As usual energy efficiency was a big factor in making a decision on my return pump. I already have a brand new Gorman Rupp model 14520 - which is a great pump, but not very efficient (over 2 amps!) Aside from energy efficiency I wanted between 700 and 1000 GPH moving through the sump. The protein skimmer that I selected (more to come on this later) could pull as much as 700 gph of water flow so I wanted to at least hit this mark. I also factored in some extra flow to run through a fluidized reactor. At the end of the day I decided on a Snapper by Sequence.

Snapper Reeflo Pump

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Water Movement

If you’ve been following along you might remember that I’m trying to keep this system as energy efficient as I can, within reason. The biggest potential energy consumers in an aquarium system are those that are always running - the pumps. One thing that most reef keepers know these days is that more flow is better, usually we shoot for a turnover rate of 20-40 times the tank volume, and in some cases upwards of 60 times the tank volume. In this case I wanted to shoot for about 30x turn over (return pump included) and the most energy efficient way to do this was using Tunze Stream powerheads.

Stack of Tunzes!

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